Convicted
in early November for three counts of criminal mistreatment of a child, Ashley
Hutt and Mac McIver were sentenced for injecting their 2, 4 and 6 and year old
children with heroin. Impoverished, the poor couple was without health
insurance and needed to treat their underfed and diaper-rashed children with
the only “medicine” they had.
Though
their kids are now healthy and safe in child protective services, the sheer
shock of the headline is reviving the far too downplayed opioid epidemic
plaguing our nation.
The
epicenter of this narcotic crisis isn’t rooted in illegal drug trade, it rather
stems a greater cultural dependence on opioids promulgated through the rising
popularity of prescription painkillers. We as a country, like Ashley Hutt, use
and abuse narcotics as an easy fix to dull our chronic pains.
How did
we get here?
Our
first mistake begins with “the war on drugs”. The damage of this movement
spurred by H.W. Bush and the ‘drug czars’ is not the spike in drug-related
incarceration, but in the larger blindsiding narrative. Marked with an
asterisk, in reality the battle was against illegal
drugs as a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s. As war has been
waged against illegal drugs, other narcotics could quietly burgeon outside of
public scrutiny, provided it was legally packaged with an FDA seal of approval.
Our second
misstep: In the early 90s powerful opioids were scarcely prescribed, only
available to cancer and end-of-life pain management. Big pharmaceutical
companies realized cancer and end-of-life patients represented a very small
portion of a larger target demographic. They changed their marketing strategies,
appealing to a broader audience and spending billions marketing directly to
doctors to increase prescription numbers – a choice supported by the FDA, and a
decision worth $400 billion dollars annually for pharma.
Our third miscalculation: The most routine
surgeries with quick recovery time like wisdom teeth removal or something as
simple as a bad back have become targets for painkiller prescriptions. This has
led to an exponentially increasing demand for OxyContin and Vicodin consequently
the price of prescription painkillers to cost a fraction of heroin. More so it has
established painkillers as the panacea to all our problems.
Combined,
over a few decades we created a culture attune to illegal drugs but completely blind
to the potential dangers of prescription drugs, while fueling a legal and
inexpensive system that annually fills more than 250 million Schedule I
prescriptions for nearly 70% of the US population. While not all patients are
addicts, we nevertheless have created a culture that dangerously supports
opioid dependence.
Like a
hydra gaining heads, this national addiction has grown more dangerous and more
multifaceted by the year. It’s no longer a simple issue beyond the 30,000
annual opioid related death, but one of child endangerment, suicide rates and increased
heroin abuse. Yet we remain frighteningly numb to a crisis in fever pitch.
Adults
are no longer the only victims of opioids, as a new study by JAMA Pediatrics has
accounted for a doubling of opioid related poisonings of children from ages 1
to 14 over the past decade, reaching more than 13,000 last year. The prevalence
of Vicodin, Percocet, OxyContin among others, has promoted the accidental
hospitalization and death of our nation’s youth. Narcotics now account for more
childhood accidents than do traffic collisions.
Beyond accidental overdoses, the readily
available compounds have seen suicides rates double over the past decade in the
14 to 24 age ranges, with triple to quadrupled rates among Caucasians. Whether
a consequence of addictive behavior or a lethal drug in easy access, the effect
is astonishing.
Ultimately
the addictive behaviors and cravings produced by these drugs often lead to the
abuse of harder drugs like heroin. Today, 75% of heroin users say they began by
abusing prescription drugs. And in the end it goes to show that our dependence
on narcotics isn’t one determined by legality, but an umbrella of addiction and
a culture obsessed.
This
epidemic poses a problem without a clear solution. Despite their dangerous
potential, these opioid drugs serve an important medical purpose for our sickest
individuals. Though outright ban would halt the drug flow, it would disservice a
significant portion of our most infirm population.
To find
any solution we must understand this is an issue of culture, and not the
chemicals. Change begins with reversing our need to prescribe a painkiller for
any and all maladies; a reformulation within pharmaceutical ethics to cease
marketing them as cure-alls; the government to taking ownership of our war on
drugs, notwithstanding the legality of the abused substance.
Spencer, I think you're so right. But then again, when aren't you? You're blog is incredibly edifying.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the culture is much more important then the chemical. As Dr. Carl Hart says, rich people do as many drugs as poor people, yet they are still successful and responsible. I think we can look to Michael Harrington's culture of poverty to see why drug use amongst the poor is so much worse than drug use among the rich.
To fix the problem of parents injecting heroin in their children's veins, we cannot crackdown on drug use. What we need to do is propose an economic plan that can educate people so they don't do foolish things with drugs.
Drugs aren't the problems. People should be allowed to responsibly use drugs in the privacy of their homes (or at a music festival). The problem is poverty--plain and simple.